Councillor David Hodge eventually buckled under the pressure of a relentless stream of criticism of the council’s self-voted pay rises.

He revealed that he and his deputy, Cllr Peter Martin, would not take the inflated raises chosen by the council, but would instead take the smaller, but still significant, raises suggested by an Independent Remuneration Panel.

Therefore Cllr Hodge will get a raise of £8.538 to £35,548 in his Special Responsibility Allowance (SRA), which will be added to his basic allowance of £12,418.

Cllr Martin will only receive a £917 cut to his raise, bringing his SRA down to £30,333.

However Cllr Hodge’s decision, coupled with his refusal to discuss the point, has only served to fuel opposition claims that the remaining raises, which represent a total of more than £250,000 in additional spending, bringing the total allowance costs past £1.5 million for the first time, should be reconsidered.

He said: “It fools no one. Liberal Democrats were unhappy with the original recommendation. More importantly none of the other huge pay rises were reduced.

“The decision for just two of them to go back to the original recommendation therefore is paltry and insulting.

“When defending the huge pay hikes, Cllr Hodge said that the council had 42 new and extra duties put on it since 2010. The extra work associated with these was one of the main reasons for the huge pay awards to the Tories.

“Given that the actual work of carrying out these new roles fell to staff, I asked when the staff were going to receive a commensurate pay rise. The leader declined to answer.”

Cabinet associate posts, which were created by the leader without a cabinet vote, will all receive £12,500, while several councillors will gain pay bumps of close to £10,000. Despite criticising opposition members for debating the point outside the council chamber, Cllr Hodge has refused to take any questions on his decision. He is also declining to comment on it outside the chamber.

Lib Dem leader Hazel Watson tabled a question at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting asking whether Cllr Hodge would be following the recommendations made by former local government minister Brandon Lewis, who called for the allowances to be referred to the council’s monitoring officer and a local auditor.

Cllr Hodge refused to answer the question, stating that it could not be discussed at a cabinet meeting as it referred to full council business. He also declined to confirm whether the decision taken on pay by himself and Cllr Martin would only refer to them, meaning any new leader and deputy would automatically gain the higher allowance.

Andy Silvester, from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Surrey residents will welcome the climb down, but they won’t forget how happy the leader and the deputy leader were to fleece the taxpayer when they thought no one was looking. Councillors must go further, with all of them only taking their recommended allowances. Surrey residents still deserve better.”